Elder Scrolls Legends vs. Hearthstone

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is current leader in card games niche. The game was successfully launched and turned card games into popular game genre. We all know that Blizzard knows how to make cool games. But Bethesda is also great game developer. Elder Scrolls Legends will definitely attract large number off players. What’s the difference between these two games? Who wins Elder Scrolls Legends vs. Hearthstone battle?

Layers

The first and the most noticeable difference is that Legends has two layers on the board. These layers are independent from each other. A player can act on one layer or on the other. If your card is located on the right layer it can attack other cards on this layer or attack Avatar of the opponent directly. Cards located on different layers can’t interact with each other. That’s the largest difference between these games.

Developers decided to go with 2 layer board because of several reasons:

It becomes more difficult to dominate. Traditional card games with one battlefield suffer from a large problem. If your opponent has a very powerful card on board you will be in trouble. You will have to sit and wait until you are completely destroyed. Two independent layers allow to decrease the importance of really strong cards. If your enemy draws very strong card on the right layer, you still have the left one where you can be in good shape.

This makes the game more strategical. 2 layers with such mechanics offer more variants of how you can act. You may want to select a defensive strategy for one layer and attacking strategy for another. You also have to think about the moves of your opponent. What is he going to do? Why he acts like this? And so on.

Conditions

Different layers in Elder Scrolls Legends may have different conditions. And that’s another big difference from Hearthstone. Conditions mean that a layer may have extra rules that affect the battle. For example right board may have a rule that prevents new cards from being attacked until the next turn. You may draw a card without risk of immediate destruction.

As you see Conditions increase the number of possible variants a lot. A single condition may change your traditional strategy and will force you and your opponent to make new decisions. On my opinion this is a very important difference of Legends. The battles are more unpredictable. It’s difficult to create a 100% working strategy for every battle because conditions affect each encounter a lot.

Graphics

Many players complain that TES Legends have poor graphics. In Hearthstone all cards and actions have great animations and are well drawn. On my opinion that’s not correct. Hearthstone has more casual / cartoony style. That’s neither good nor bad. Legends is drawn in different way. It’s less cartoony and less casual. It’s more “serious”. Both games are well drawn and pleasant to play.

Leadership

Hearthstone is current leader and that’s the main advantage of this game. A leader has a large privilege: all other projects in the niche have to offer something really cool in order to beat him. Will TES Legends be able to overcome the leader? I believe no. But that’s not the reason for ignoring the game.

Legends is an independent project. It was never meant to be Hearthstone killer. The game will definitely offer something new and if you are not 100% satisfied with current leader you should try this new game.

In general, Elder Scrolls Legends is less casual and requires more strategical thinking than Hearthstone. You will have to think a lot and that’s great.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a competitive strategy card game set in the Elder Scrolls universe. But before jumping into it you should get familiar with the rules. Read this guide to find out how to play… [..]